Infestation
by CharmingWords23
Summary: Chaos ensues when Felicity discovers a mouse in the foundry.


**Author's Note: **This is my first attempt at a fanfiction for the Olicity fandom. The idea popped into my head and I couldn't get it out, so I thought I'd post it in case anyone else would enjoy it. Any feedback would be much appreciated! Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Arrow or any characters associated with it.

**Infestation**

"How many times do I have to tell you guys to take the trash outside _right away_?" Felicity huffed. It had been a fairly quiet night, and she had begun straitening up the foundry as Diggle and Oliver trained on the mats. Their occasional _oofs_ and grunts echoed throughout the vast sublevel of Verdant, but Felicity was used to it. "It's like living with children," she grumbled to herself as she set the newly tied trash bag down next to the days-old bag that had been half-hazardly dropped just beside the back door.

"Just leave it. We'll get it later," Oliver grunted as he dodged a blow to the chin from Diggle.

"No, I'm not going to leave it!" Felicity called stubbornly as she reached to pick up the large bags. "Leaving trash inside a cold, dark, basement is how you attract bugs. And snakes. And rats. I don't really like the idea of being bitten by a deadly spider while I'm trying to work! I'm taking these bags back to the dumpster."

She heard the shuffling on the mats stop, and could have _sworn_ she heard Oliver mumbling something along the lines of "_Deadly spiders in Starling City?_" She pressed the button next to the door, signaling for it to unlock and open for her. Oliver and Diggle didn't like it when she took the trash out. They said it was because the dumpster was in the alley behind the club where more than a few heroin dealers had been known to do business on occasion. Felicity, however, suspected it also had to do a little bit with the male ego.

But if they weren't going to do their jobs, then she would just have to do it, right?

She lifted the bags from the floor, and shifted them in her hands so that one was slightly in front and one was slightly behind her. The smell of rotting Big Belly Burger leftovers wafted up from the older bag and Felicity recoiled a little bit in revulsion. They should have done this chore days ago.

"Hold on, hold on," Diggle called from behind her. She looked back to see him pulling a shirt on and reaching for the bag in her left hand. "I'll take them."

"I can handle it." She moved the bag just out of his reach stubbornly.

Diggle gave her a small smile. "I'm sorry we didn't take the trash out earlier. We know it's one of your pet peeves, so we should have been on top of it. Please let me take it out for you."

Felicity rolled her eyes and smiled. "I don't know why I even try with you two."

"You love us," Oliver interjected playfully from where he was taking a swig from the water bottle on her desk. He was shirtless and had a towel draped over his shoulders. From across the foundry, Felicity could still make out the tiny beads of sweat glistening around his hairline and down his torso.

Giving a non-committal "hmph," she jerked her eyes away from him and made quick work of handing the two trash bags to Digg. Diggle gave her a nod, trying to suppress his laugh when she crossed her arms and walked back towards her desk. Felicity heard the back door close behind Diggle with a loud clank.

"You know this is a basement and probably already has spiders in it, right?" Oliver goaded with a smile before taking another swig from his water bottle.

"That's not the point," she responded, daring him with her eyes to argue.

He surrendered by arranging his face into what she termed the "puppy dog pout" and stepping forward so that he was _almost_ in her personal space. "I'm sorry," he offered in a tone that was a tad too bemused to be completely sincere. Felicity pursed her lips and shook her head to clear the image of his wide blue eyes and serious-set mouth from her mind. Damn him. He knew exactly how to play her. Well she wasn't falling for it this time. Taking out the trash really wasn't _that_ big of a deal, but it was the principle of it! At least Digg had had the decency to take it out now once she gave them a hard time about it. Oliver could barely even manage an apology without turning it into a joke.

Well when his vigilante headquarters was crawling with bugs, she'd be the one getting the last laugh.

A resounding beep from her computer monitor made them both turn to look at the pop-up on the screen. With a sigh, Felicity tabled the lecture she was preparing for another night. Duty called.

She stepped around Oliver and took a seat, tapping at the familiar keys from memory. She tried not to lose focus when Oliver hovered behind her with one hand propped on the back of her chair and one next to her on the desk. "Looks like just an average break-in over on Main Street. Cops already responding," she said easily as she continued tapping away to try to find more information.

Then the screen went black.

"Huh?" Felicity clicked a few keys, but nothing happened.

She felt Oliver tense behind her for a moment, no doubt remembering the recent infiltrations of the foundry by Tockman and Slade.

No lights in the foundry had gone out. In fact, the computer itself was still running, but it seemed as if the monitor had simply lost power.

"What the hell?" Felicity mumbled, agitated. Her computers were _not_ supposed to betray her like this.

"Can you just turn it back on?" Oliver wondered aloud.

Felicity fought the urge to shoot him a death glare. "I've tried rebooting. I don't know what's wrong." She pushed out of her chair and made her way around the metal desk to inspect the back of the monitor. Oliver followed. "I thought maybe it was damaged when Roy dumped the table over the other day, but it doesn't look like it."

"Roy did _what?_" Oliver yelled. Oops. She and Diggle had decided that Oliver really didn't need to know about Roy's split-second rage over the forgotten mustard on his cheeseburger. No one had been hurt, and the poor kid had been really upset and embarrassed…

"Nothing!" Felicity covered quickly, cursing herself and her big mouth. "Here, move this shelf," she demanded – hoping to divert his attention. She had grabbed on to the power cord to the monitor, and had followed it to where it disappeared behind a utility shelf nearby. She needed to get back there to make sure there wasn't water damage or something.

Oliver moved in front of her to easily shift the shelf away from the wall. Felicity scooted past him and took her phone from her pocket to serve as a flashlight.

"When were you going to tell me that Roy flipped the desk over?"

"Uh…" she looked over her shoulder and gave him what she hoped was a smile close to the one he had tried on her earlier. "Never?"

"I think I need to know when things like that happen, Felicity," he grumped from behind her as she crouched down and inched forward behind the shelf looking for the power strip that the monitor was plugged into. She could see it a few feet ahead of her, but couldn't tell what the problem was.

"I'm trying to teach him how to control himself, so it's kind of important that I know when he doesn't have control."

Once she was within reach of the plastic electrical device with cable after cable plugged into it, she shifted her phone up to her mouth and held onto it with her teeth so that she could use both her hands to test the plugs.

"Was anyone hurt? Did you lose any of your equipment? I'll replace anything he broke."

Felicity gave an unintelligible "uhn-uhn" as the answer to his question, then resumed her work. She reached for each individual cord and then tested to make sure they were soundly plugged in within their respective outlets. When she got to the last chord plugged into the strip, she saw a faint shimmer of blue when the light from her phone hit it. Interested, she scooted forward a little more, and saw that the outer covering of the cord had been gnawed through and the inside electrical wires were hanging out like it had been eviscerated.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she made a move to begin backing out of the small space.

As if fate had a cruel sense of humor, before she could fully rise from her crouched position, she heard a light scuffle and felt something small and furry crawl over her hand.

Felicity shrieked and shot up, bumping her knee against the back of the utility shelf in the process. She stepped backwards right into Oliver's bare chest, and was immediately pulled aside so that he could see who – or what – had startled her. His arm was stretched out in front of her as a barrier between her body and the unknown threat. When he didn't instantly see what was threatening her from behind the shelf, he whirled around.

"What's wrong? What is it?" He put his hands on her shoulders to steady her and willed her to meet her frantic eyes with his.

"It was a –" She was cut off by a light squeak and the motion of a small ball of fur by her feet. She shrieked again, grabbed onto Oliver's forearm, and lifted her foot. "Catch it!" she yelled wildly.

Oliver noticed the creature a split second after Felicity did. Before he could move to catch it, it scampered underneath another close by utility shelf.

Not hesitating, Felicity let go of Oliver's arm and hurriedly ran back over to her desk. Within moments, she had pulled herself up onto the top of the desk, and was kneeling on it so that no part of her body touched the ground. When she looked back at Oliver to figure out why he wasn't doing _something_, she caught him grinning at her. Actually _grinning_.

"Oliver Queen! This is not funny!" she yelled. "You have a mouse infestation!"

"Don't you mean _we_ have a mouse infestation?" he parroted humorously. "If I had known that all it would take to make you run was a little brown mouse, I would have brought a couple of them in when you were so adamant to stay in here during the Undertaking," he mused.

"Very funny," she mock laughed. "Now can you catch it?"

Oliver grinned at her again, and then winked as he picked up his bow from the table beside her.

"What are you doing?!" she shrieked again.

Confused, he turned around. "I'm catching the mouse," he responded slowly. He looked at her like he thought maybe she'd hit her head on that shelf as well.

"You can't kill it. It didn't do anything wrong."

"Felicity, it's a mouse. And if you want to get technical, it did cause that cut on your knee."

Felicity looked down and noticed a bright red gash just above her kneecap. Perplexed, she grabbed the sweaty towel Oliver had set on her desk and held it against the cut. The scrape burned a little when the damp towel hit it, but she bit her lip to keep from showing any discomfort. Oliver and Diggle wouldn't even _notice_ a cut like this on themselves.

She looked up to see Oliver studying her carefully. "Okay?" he questioned.

Felicity nodded and removed the towel. She was pleased to find only a shallow cut; nothing a Band-Aid couldn't take care of. With the dirty towel gone, it really didn't hurt either. "Back to the real problem," she said seriously, motioning behind him with her eyes.

Oliver raised his bow in a silent question.

"Can you just catch it?" She answered in her best persuasive voice. "Then we'll release it outside."

Oliver smirked and shrugged. "If that's what you want…"

Felicity nodded and stood up on the desk. There was no way she was stepping on the floor until that thing was caught. The last thing she wanted was her feet exposed to a mouse through her open-toed shoes. "It went behind that shelf," she instructed, pointing to the utility shelf in front of them.

"You're not going to fall off that desk, right?" Oliver asked warily.

"Oliver, I spend all day in high heels. I'll be fine."

Oliver looked unconvinced as he set his bow down and quickly traded it for a nearby bucket that they had been using to catch some dripping water from an overhead pipe. He dumped the bucket out in the sanitary tub across the room while Felicity kept a watchful eye on the bottom of the shelf – ready to call for backup at the sign of any movement.

"Do you think that bucket will hold it?" Felicity wondered doubtfully, wringing her hands in front of her nervously as Oliver made his way back towards her.

"I guess we'll find out," he responded casually. He shifted the bucket into his right hand, and then reached to get a grip on the shelf with his right hand. Just as he was about to pull the shelf out, he heard Felicity whimper in fear. He paused and looked at her quizzically. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Uh huh," she nodded, unable to hide her fidgeting and the fact that her eyes were still fixated on the bottom of the shelf. "I just don't like mice. Like, _really_ don't like them. With their tales and their beady little eyes…they just look so _sinister_." She shivered and Oliver suppressed a smile.

"When I was on the island, a decent size mouse could be a meal." He turned back to the shelf and prepared again to pull it out from the wall.

"You can't be serious."

"You'd be surprised what you're willing to catch and eat when you're starving," he said with a shrug, pausing to make sure the canister of dull arrowheads on the top shelf was stable enough to not tip over when he moved the shelf.

Felicity was silent for a moment, caught between wanting to jump down and pull the man in front of her into a hug and wanting to stay as far away from the rodent infested floor as possible.

Oliver seemed to notice the dilemma on her face as he studied her again. "Is there a reason you have a problem with mice?" he probed.

"What? No!"

He narrowed his eyes at her quick dismissal. "The truth please."

She hesitated. "It's really stupid." She sighed. "And juvenile. And really no big deal, so we'll skip the story."

"Felicity."

"Fine. There may have been an incident on the school bus in seventh grade. One of the eighth graders had brought in mice for a project, and somehow he put one on my head as a joke. It just really startled me and I kind of freaked out…and now I hate them."

Felicity laughed nervously and looked down at her nails to avoid what she was sure would be a teasing grin on his face. All the other kids had thought it was hilarious, and maybe it was. At the time it hadn't been and obviously she was still emotionally scarred from this horrible trauma she experienced in middle school, so she wasn't relishing the idea of reliving it with Oliver Queen.

"Like I said, it's really dumb and embarrassing, but I just _really_ don't like mice now. So can we please –"

"Who was it?" He interrupted.

His serious tone stopped her, and she looked up at him in confusion. Instead of a mocking grin on his face, she saw his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened. He looked like he was about to step out into the Glades as the Arrow.

"What?"

"Give. Me. His. Name." Oliver ground out angrily.

"You're being ridiculous. I'm not giving you his name," she retorted easily, not understanding why he was so worked up over this.

"I just want to talk to him."

"It was _middle school_," she deflected. "It was a long time ago, and I've totally moved on."

"You're standing on a desk."

She looked down at her current position guiltily. "I'm wearing open-toed shoes," she justified after a moment.

They stared at each other, neither willing to concede just yet. Seeing her worked up because of the incident from her childhood (which he knew her well enough to know she had sugar-coated) made him want to throw someone through a table. Preferably the asshat who had terrorized her on the bus in the first place. Felicity on the other hand just wanted to get rid of the mouse and pretend this whole humiliating evening had not happened.

"That dealer back here just tried to sell me Cocaine," Diggle said cheerfully as he entered back into the lair from the alley doorway. "I think that means our alley is moving up in class. What are you doing?"

He had noticed Felicity standing on the desk glaring at Oliver, and Oliver holding a metal bucket while glaring at Felicity.

"There's a mouse under the shelf," Oliver stated.

"Ah." Diggle nodded in understanding. He stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the shelf. "I'll move it, you trap it."

Felicity watched in horrified fascination as Diggle quickly scooted the shelf out from the wall, and the small, furry mouse scurried out at the speed of light – right towards Oliver. Almost just as quickly, the Starling City Vigilante threw himself (and the bucket) on top of the small animal.

They collectively held their breaths.

Then Oliver pressed his ear to the top of the bucket and grinned. "Got it."

Felicity pumped her first in the air and Diggle just shook his head.

Digg took the mouse outside to release it to live out its days happily in its natural habitat. Oliver helped Felicity down from the desk and together they replaced the gnawed monitor wire and restored the foundry to order.

The next evening, when Felicity arrived to the foundry to begin her nighttime activities, she noticed a small, black, square sticking out from beneath the utility shelf. Cautiously, she approached and crouched down to inspect it. When she pulled it out, she realized it was a "'sticky trap" – traditionally used to catch (but not kill) the common variety mouse. Upon further inspection, she noticed one underneath every utility shelf in the lair.

She looked up to where Oliver was sharpening his arrows across the room. She smiled in thanks, and he gave her a small smile and nod back. Neither of them said a word.


End file.
